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Dodecahedron Challenge Won by Student in Record Time!

At Stratford High School, in room 1106, during 3rd block, on a B-day something beautiful happened. A student far surpassed his teacher. What took the teacher a weekend to accomplish the student did in less than 20 minutes. And, what’s more he did it in style.

On a less auspicious B-day two weeks earlier the challenge was announced. The first student to create a 3-dimensional model of the dodecahedron, one of the platonic solids, using the Autodesk Inventor software would have the opportunity to emboss and then print the model using the new 3D-printer the uPrint SE/Plus.

A dodecahedron is probably familiar to many people because it is often used to create the 12 sided die used in gaming. All of the students in Erik Boczko's Technological Design class have been making good progress learning how to creating complex 3-dimensional shapes such as prisms, tetrahedra and cones. The dodecahedron represents a significant increase in difficulty over these other shapes and for that reason it was offered up as the object of a special design challenge. Not to worry, there will be many more such challenges forthcoming from room 1106.

Christian created his CAD model by first creating a single pentagon and then importing this into the assembly environment. There he duplicated the pentagon 11 times and used a built in constrain command to identify which sides to “glue” together. As the undisputed winner of the challenge, Christian got to learn how to operate the 3D printer and how to use the CatalystEX software to send his model to the printer. Christian learned the software faster than the three hours it took to print his prize. He got to keep the printed solid. An impressive feat that even Plato would envy.